阿里巴巴集团 Dominated Partner Announcements at this Year's IBC

The incredible shrinking Earth was on display at September’s IBC show in Amsterdam, where a number of well-known companies in the streaming space made announcements highlighting partnerships with one of the industry’s newest entrants: 阿里巴巴集团而且增长迅速阿里巴巴云计算部门.

从Haivision到Wowza, a number of press announcements centered on the integration of hardware and software services within arguably the first successful 阿里巴巴集团 service to reach America.

In 2014, 阿里巴巴集团, 现在以BABA的名字在纽约证券交易所上市, 创造了历史，成为全球规模最大的IPO, with more than $25 billion in shares sold on opening day. 雅虎, which had a 15 percent stake in Alibaba as part of its China strategy, 现在持有36美元的大部分.40亿美元的估值，主要是阿里巴巴股票. This is after selling off its core advertising assets to Verizon, 但仍保留雅虎日本和阿里巴巴的股份.

For most, the Alibaba hype could be summed up in two words: market potential. While others were unable to penetrate the Chinese consumer goods market, Alibaba—10 companies that collectively take on 亚马逊’s core ecommerce product delivery business as well as eBay’s auction approach—grew into a trillion-dollar business.

阿里巴巴集团的崛起令人震惊. Its revenue growth from 2014 to 2015 more than doubled 亚马逊’s (44.阿里巴巴增长1%.5 percent for 亚马逊) while maintaining an operating margin of 26.6 percent, which is closer to eBay’s operating margin (26.4 percent in that same time frame) than it is to 亚马逊’s (less than 1 percent for the 2014 calendar year).

阿里巴巴集团的云计算部门, 可以互换称为阿里云或阿里云, 自2009年以来以各种形式存在. But it wasn’t until AliCloud opened international data centers in Hong Kong (2014) and Silicon Valley (2015) and moved its international headquarters from China to Singapore (2015) that the business world began paying attention.

亚马逊, 就其本身而言, 在那之前很久，阿里云就已经受到关注了吗, in no small part because Alibaba handed 亚马逊 its e-commerce hat in China and across parts of Asia-Pacific (APAC). 亚马逊理解SWOT中的T(优势), 弱点, 机会, 和威胁), a classic MBA tool used to calculate the risk involved in a company’s overall marketplace.

拓展中国市场, 拥有超过10亿的消费者, is an opportunity; facing a Chinese competitor not just in China but also on a global stage is a threat to a company’s very existence. 阿里巴巴对亚马逊构成了巨大威胁, so 亚马逊 must meet the AliCloud challenge to protect its cloud business.

It wasn’t a surprise when 亚马逊 announced in late 2013 that it would expand its 亚马逊 Cloud service to China, a strategic move to preempt AliCloud from moving too far afield from its Chinese roots. Alibaba seemed intent on balancing the playing field, 虽然, and has made at least two large investments—one topping $1 billion in 2014, which allowed AliCloud to expand to Dubai and move forward in the United States—to compete with 亚马逊.

即便如此，这也将是一场艰难的攀登. While 阿里巴巴集团 trails 亚马逊 slightly in its ecommerce offerings, it is much further behind in the web services space: 亚马逊 has almost 10 percent of the global cloud computing market, 收入7美元.2015年的云计算收入为90亿美元. 阿里云只获得了0美元.40亿年.

The potential market balancer, 虽然, may be the Chinese cloud computing market. It experienced a 45 percent compound annual growth rate between 2013 and 2015 and now accounts for about $3.年收入10亿美元. 换句话说, if 亚马逊 isn’t successful with its push into the Chinese cloud computing market, the potential is there for AliCloud to dominate the Chinese market and thereby need less of the overall global cloud computing market to catch up with 亚马逊’s cloud computing services the same way it is doing in the ecommerce realm.

One advantage that Alibaba has in APAC is that it understands the market. 这个市场充满了危险, from incompatible video formats to highly fragmented market sectors. We’ll explore those issues in a future Streams of Thought column.

[本文发表于2016年10月号。 流媒体杂志 作为“向东看”."]